Jonas of the Clan please.
|
Ride to ruin and the world's ending! (TBS, Becko & Joao)
|
|
If anyone wants to dedlurk/team with me, that'd be appreciated. There will be at least two instances over the summer where I'll need some help covering my turns.
Your start:
 Played: Pitboss 18 - Kublai Khan of Germany Somalia | Pitboss 11 - De Gaulle of Byzantium | Pitboss 8 - Churchill of Portugal | PB7 - Mao of Native America | PBEM29 Greens - Mao of Babylon
Thanks Xenu.
Regarding my leader choice, I've now played/am playing Fin/Cre/Org/Spi/Phi. Technically I've played Exp as well, but not with the granary bonus, which I view as the fun part of the trait, so it's going in my 'not played yet pile'. Also in there we have Ind, Imp, Cha, Ag, Pro, in that order of usefulness. So, my criteria for a leader is that I really want to play with Exp, with Ind leaders as backups. Possible (good) Exp leaders are Exp/Imp, Exp/Phi and Exp/Cha. Out of all the traits I've played before, Phi is definitely out. I'm playing it in PB18 and I'm running a Pyramids fuelled (well, part-)specialist economy in PBEM53. I'd like to steer myself into a cottage game here, which I haven't really played yet. PB13 was more of a coast-cottage hybrid and of course we were pretty behind for most of the game. So, Exp/Phi is out and Joao's Exp/Imp is my first choice here, I really hope I can land it. Exp/Cha is a reasonable backup. Ind pairings are Ind/Cre, Ind/Org, Ind/Spi, Ind/Imp. None of these options excite me as much as Joao though. Do they beat Exp/Cha if Joao is gone? I wouldn't mind trying Ind/Org with Aztecs/HRE if I can work around the starting techs. Ind/Spi sounds the most fun in a vacuum. I feel Ind/Imp is pretty weak. Ind/Cre is probably the strongest but I'm not sure I want to play it, also, both Ind/Spi and Ind/Cre suggest Mids. I need to consider possible civ pairings now that I have the start but right now I'm thinking Exp/Imp, Exp/Cha, Ind/Org, Ind/Spi, Ind/Cre in roughly that order. Joao is my top by some distance though which is why I was against Gaspar's 'Boggle' method, I just want a simple method that gives me the best shot at my first choice.
Ok, so it looks like I need at least 1 of Hunting or Agriculture for my first worker to improve all those resource tiles. I need a pretty good reason not to have one of them. Fishing is useless as well as cheap so that should be gone. I don't mind Myst too much in general, but with Joao in particular I think I should be getting to BW and Pottery ASAP before other considerations, so I would prefer to avoid it. Boringly enough, the best combo is probably Agri/Wheel, there's only 2 civs left there though, Babylon and Ottomans, neither that great.
My choices: 1. Joao(Exp/Imp) of Zulu 2. Joao(Exp/Imp) of Mongolia 3. Joao(Exp/Imp) of the Ottomans 4. Washington(Exp/Cha) of Mongolia 5. Roosevelt(Ind/Org) of Aztec 6. Ramesses(Ind/Spi) of Arabia 7. Louis (Ind/Cre) of Babylon 8. Augustus (Ind/Imp) of HRE 9. De Gaulle(Ind/Cha) of Mongolia Zulu seems worth the 30b deficit at the start. Mongolia is a bit more debatable but I'll go with it too. Then we have the standard Ottomans. After that, pairing Mongolia with the Cha civ seemed like fun and then Aztec has Hunting so I think I can work with it. Ramesses of Arabia ... well, that's clearly a weak start, but it does have a lot of synergy. Not too much thought went into the rest of the stuff really. If I miss Joao then I rather doubt Washington of Mongolia will be taken and the Ramesses pick being gone is even more unlikely. I wanted to have 7 different leaders/civs in there though, even then there's a possibility of running through my picks and missing all of them. Really, we should have done this method for leaders first, and then after that run it for the civs.
Joao!
 Can't complain about that. I maybe should have looked a bit more closely at what a Joao start would look like though, I'm feeling very beaker constrained. I need 3 food techs, then Mining -> BW to convert my food to hammers to actually use my multipliers and then 2 more techs to get to Pottery and the best part of my traits. I did some basic calculations and I think I'm going to have to compromise somewhere. Right now that extra 30b from Agriculture is taunting me. I'm not sure about Wheel over Mining too but to be fair, I think it's harder to see how useful the Wheel will be at the start when you don't know where you're roads will go(and I'd have to take Hunting/Mining ... weak civs and less overall beakers). It's done now anyway, guess I'll just see what I can come up with. As for the other picks, it seems my choices weren't as unconventional as I thought, if I missed Joao I could be down at Louis, really glad that didn't happen. I wonder if we all have the same starts, the fact that Commodore and Pindicator took fishing civs suggests otherwise but I'm not sure. In Commodore's case, a power choice like Rome is possibly worth it. Not sure about Pindicator though, Carthage was originally on my radar for the Exp/Cothon synergy but I didn't think it was worth the techs. I suspect Washington would come out of this start a bit better than Joao though, more focused tech path and the extra happy gives him more time to use the food before need BW to change it to hammers. I think Thoth probably came out with the best combo, followed by Gaspar. Given we're playing on a large cylindrical map I think Spi could be better than Org and Zulu is probably the best civ there. The last two picks have some nice synergy as well, it will be interesting to see how dtay does with Roosevelt of Mali. Happy to have a second Ind civ in play at least. Then Oxy of the ultra-quick Academy. I have to say, Maya sort of annoys me though. On the one hand, it says take Cre, cheap Ball Courts! On the other hand you start off with Myst which is useless for ages with Cre. He's the only one to start with Myst yet has the least need of a religion. On the topic of techs neither dtay nor Oxy have any food techs, if they have 3 different food sources like I do, that could be difficult to navigate.
If you don't mind a dedlurker who'll be of very little practical use, I'd be happy to tag along and root for you-- never dedlurked before.
So, uh, first question... How do you usually work out your moves for the early game? Do you sandbox? Or spreadsheet? Or play by ear?
Awesome, great to have you aboard Becko!
I work out my early game moves in a sandbox mostly. I do some calculations on paper or in my head during the walk to college too but in the early game I'll make sure everything works in the sandbox. I can attach it here when I make it if you want?
That'd be great! I sometimes sandbox too, but I find the difficult part is deciding which path I should take.
As for advice: from reading your other games, there's probably not a lot I can help you with in terms of either micro or macro -- you're playing very well as it is. So is there anything else I can do? C&D? Naming themes? Asking too many questions? 
Here's the sandbox, though I guess I need to change it if the we stick with a Large map. I doubt the increase in tech costs will favour us if that goes ahead but I don't really mind adapting.
For the moment, the main decision is to check whether a Mining -> BW opening can possibly work. Anything else opens with Agriculture and worker. I wouldn't even consider Mining -> BW if I wasn't Imp to be honest. Any help or questions at all would be great. It will keep me more involved at least. And I currently have no micro/macro plan for this game.  My opinion on C+D is that it is not really worth the time it takes, but I obviously wouldn't turn down someone doing it for me. I find just doing known tech bonus analysis gets me most of the important information.I was thinking of a Rohan naming theme, branching out into the rest of Middle Earth eventually. It is a little unoriginal though, if you have any better ideas. Also, one of those instances I'll be away is next Monday - Wednesday.  Would you be able to cover for me then? Password is Joao anyway, if you ever want to look around. My screenshot seems to have failed unfortunately, I'll get another next time, but I moved the scout south and found some clams. I want to check out the plains hill East of the Mountain that shares the wheat as a possible second city site, but I figure I can circle around and the mountain will give me a lot of the vision on border pop anyway.
|
